Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1752 |
| AUTHOR: | William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) |
| QUOTATION: | If that vital spark that we find in a grain of wheat can pass unchanged through countless deaths and resurrections, will the spirit of man be unable to pass from this body to another? |
| ATTRIBUTION: | In “The Prince of Peace,” a lecture delivered at Chautauquas and religious gatherings, starting in 1904, he phrased the idea this way: “If this invisible germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass unimpaired through three thousand resurrections, I shall not doubt that my soul has power to clothe itself with a body suited to its new existence when this earthly frame has crumbled into dust.”—Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, vol. 2, p. 284 (1909). |
| SUBJECTS: | Spirit |